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5 key tenets for patient engagement in the digital age

The surge in personalized medicine and the quantified self movement offers providers more tools than ever to engage patients. Mobile apps and online services now collect data for a deep dive into our health, from prevention to optimization.

In my years as a clinician and writer focused on preventive health, I’ve observed that simply relying on data does not always drive motivation. In fact relying on data alone may mean missing an opportunity to optimize patient engagement.

In today’s digital and mobile age, the following should be key tenets that drive engagement.

Comprehensive and Contextualized Information
While a single data point has value, there are additional pieces of data that help inform a patient even more about their health or disease risk. Consider the biomarker glucose. A high glucose level indicates elevated blood sugar levels to show early diabetes risks. If a patient’s glucose readings are out of the normal range, it could indicate a serious condition.

However, testing the biomarker HbA1c provides a more accurate understanding of blood glucose levels because HbA1c is a measure of average blood sugar over the last few months. A comprehensive look at related data points indicated a different level of risk. This contextualized view gives us a more complete picture of what is happening in the body. http://medcitynews.com/2016/08/5-key-tenets-patient-engagement-todays-digital-age/Read More.